I just finished remodeling my website using Claude Code: https://billwidmer.com/ It is entirely vibe coded and SEO-friendly. I moved from WordPress to Astro, fixed a bunch of technical SEO issues, and came up with consistent branding that I'll be using everywhere. I've had a "personal brand" for 13 years. It's got me warm referrals and a fairly cushy life for most of the 2020s. But I never really took it seriously. That changed this year. My entire focus for the next several years is to fully commit to becoming an authority in the space of AI search optimization, building a personal brand, LinkedIn following, and eventually an email list. Part of that was the new site. Part of it was investing in @Sam Rathling's LinkedIn social selling cohort. I'm curious if any of you are hard-committing to your personal brand. Drop a comment with your plans and I'm happy to share what I'm learning and help where I can!

Hey, founders! I've been hard at work growing my LinkedIn profile and closing deals with new clients. I just landed a possible $14k deal yesterday. So I figured I'd share how I'm doing it. First, warm network. I have 13 years of experience in SEO, and dozens of past clients. So I reached out to all of them to check in, see if they are looking for help with their SEO, or if they could refer me to someone else who is. The majority of my business has been built on referrals; if you're not reaching out to past clients or asking for connections yet, start there. Second, LinkedIn. It's a VERY powerful tool for finding leads and growing an audience if you're in the B2B space. I followed @Sam Rathling's advice and re-vamped my profile, started connecting with 100+ new people every week, posting 3-4 times per week, and sending cold DMs. Soon, I'll also be writing LinkedIn articles. If you want to be recommended by AI for your work, LinkedIn articles are one of the easiest and fastest ways to do that (LinkedIn is the #1 most cited network for professional queries on most AI platforms right now, and it's growing). Finally, I'm using AI for ALL KINDS of things. Recently, I redesigned my entire website to speak more clearly to my ICP (ideal client profile), and hit EEAT signals (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) to be trustworthy to Google and AI. Check it out here. Shout out to @Mark Webster and his amazing AI accelerator for teaching me how to do it. I'm also using AI to create a daily CEO dashboard for my life that tracks all my personal and business goals and reminds me when I have tasks due or haven't moved a project forward in a while. It's amazing to keep me on track. What is everyone else doing right now to win clients and make their lives easier with AI right now? Drop it in the comments!

After I get empty of fuel and quit my CHat GTp prosject as I did hard ( like every second in my mind ) last year - I became depressed- then started to get fit every day for 89 days - then I quit- now I am back with my AI project - My goal was to make One Prompt = One Website - now my AI is working on my old project www.Costamap.com without me 🥳

Before I closed the client, on discovery call, he told me his SEO was broken. ↳ Traffic was okay-ish. ↳ Rankings were down drastically. He believed something was wrong with the content he was publishing. So I did a content and technical audit. ↳ 184 referring domains ↳ 17 new domains in the last 30 days I was looking for specific alarming indicators. And I found exactly what I was looking for: ↳ 80 lost domains. ↳ 131 lost backlinks. He had a problem called "link decay". So I did 3 things: ↳ Recovered 23 lost domains within 3 weeks ↳ Fixed 71 broken backlinks ↳ Left the profile alone (test period) 0% toxicity = don't duck-up and leave things as is Outcome: ↳ Rankings moved up ↳ Traffic up by 2% A good start. Next up: ↳ getting him solid 'relevant' backlinks ↳ updating his content strategy

I just had a free a strategy call with our own @Sam Rathling today, and WOW was I blown away. Sam is a LinkedIn sales specialist who's done 165 free strategy calls since April 1st, and her community grows almost entirely by referral (49% referral rate). When someone with those numbers tells you your profile is leaking conversions, you listen. Here's what I'm changing, and what you probably should too: 𝟭. 𝗠𝗮𝘅 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸. LinkedIn gives you up to 200 requests per week, and the unused allowance doesn't roll over. Sam treats this as non-negotiable. Build an ICP list in Sales Navigator, filter for 2nd-degree connections who actively post, and send requests with NO note. Around 50% accept. That's roughly 100 new ICP people per week, or about 1,200 people seeing your content within 3 months. I've been adding 10-20 a week. Oops. 𝟮. 𝟳𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳𝗳. Mine started with the hook ("aging SaaS bloggers bleeding traffic to AI") and the actual keywords got truncated. Fix: put what you do first ("SaaS SEO & AEO Consultant"), hook second. Same rule for DMs: only the first line shows, so it has to make sense alone. 𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲. Desktop shows 3 items, mobile shows only 1. So that first slot matters most. Sam's featured article landed her a $4,000 client. Most of us leave this section empty or stuff it with random posts. 𝟰. 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝗜. This is the AEO/SEO angle. LinkedIn is the second most trusted source for AI tools, and Sam has had 5 sales meetings from AI recommending her. Write articles and newsletters in Q&A format, end each one with an about-the-author plus a book-a-call link, and use them to link out to your full blog posts (links are fine there, unlike regular posts). 𝟱. 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗗𝗠𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲. One of Sam's clients sends only 20 DMs and gets 5-6 sales meetings a week. Another booked 11 meetings in a week and a half after fixing one outreach message. She'd take 20 DMs that get 5 meetings over 200 DMs with a 2% response rate. So would I.